“The Longest Hair in the World”: Let your hair down

Once upon a time, there was a high school graduate in Munich who, thanks to his unique personality, found his way deep into the world of fashion. Elisabeth Schweikl has modeled for designer Demna Gvasalia since 2024, first at Balenciaga and, after she moved to Gucci, there as well. This year they signed four modeling agencies. Her undyed blonde hair reached down to her thighs.

In folk mythology Lithuania The hair of girls and women is revered as something magical and protective. However, only if it is long and well-groomed, ideally braided. There is a wild and uncontrollable power to be feared behind untied hair. The devil must be ruffling wild hair.

Our hair is truly magical. They work like antennas. They pierce the body with roots that connect many nerves. They have an internal clock that matches their growth. If our brain is the processor of our lives, then our hair is our external hard drive. Stored in it: toxins, color pigments, proteins, biological data, DNA. By reading it, strangers can find out how stressed you are, what you eat, who you are. “Hair is something deeply personal, but at the same time it must be evaluated by the public. Hair lies right on the border between biology and identity,” science journalist Simar Bajaj wrote recently in the journal. New York Times.

How a woman should wear her personal assets in public is interpreted differently. While Botticelli’s Venus wrapped herself in floor-length strands of hair, Marianne, who led the French people to freedom, wore her hair short and covered with a Phrygian cap. In the 1920s, the bob hairstyle became a symbol of female emancipation. Several years later, Simone de Beauvoir considered long hair a tool of social control. Therefore, the woman who cuts or colors them is exercising self-determination. The shaved head became a symbol of protests in Iran in 2022. In contrast, ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups shave the heads of married women before covering them with wigs – as an expression of absolute purity.

Women never hear about their own hair – every hairstyle has political and cultural content. My grandfather didn’t let my mother wear long curly hair when she was little. It looks messy. As a teenager, his protests logically looked long and curly. At the same age, I dyed my mane purple and then cut it chin-length for self-determination. As a gentle breeze blew, for a moment I could feel it: the devil’s hand. He’s disheveled and he’s disheveled.

In November, Francesca Allen showed her series of images “Plaukai”, hair in Lithuanian, at the exhibition “Paris Photo”.